A place where I can go when I am lost, and there I'll find me

Archive for December, 2012

I have a need to get some thoughts off my chest regarding the chaos in our world over the past few days. The Sandy Hook massacre, what a horrible word, has affected the whole world, it has brought about anger, sadness and our need as people to find someone or something to blame when things go wrong.

I want to start with words of sorrow and sympathy for all those who lost a loved one on Friday. For the families, the mothers, Fathers, Brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, grandparents, cousins and friends of those twenty sweet children that were taken away, way to soon. My thoughts are also with the families and friends of the adults, the amazing, teachers, principals and staff at Sandy Hook elementary who gave their lives so that so many of the children in their school could go home that night. I am awed by their strength, their willingness to die for these children. My prayers and sympathy is for that whole community the innocence that was taken from so many children as they witnessed this horror, the teachers who maintained calm for those kids, for everyone in that small town who morn for what was lost of their idyllic home.

My thoughts are not only for the victims at the school but for the family of the shooter, a family who lost a Mother and Son/Brother, a family who lost their loved ones just as truly as anyone else, a family that mourns and also deals with the fact that their brother and son killed so many. I feel for them as they try to make sense of this tragic event, just as I feel for the other victims and their families. This event had twenty-eight victims, I include Adam into this count because he was a victim of something, if he felt the solutions to his problems was to go into an elementary school armed, to kill and to terrify a bunch of small children.

I find myself frustrated with the world right now. I find myself angry that something like this can occur; I find that I am shocked by the world’s reaction. I find the comparison to other shootings mind boggling, the idea that this tragic event can be compared to another and rated less drastic because less life was taken is ridiculous, one life is one to many. I find the people who immediately followed finding out about this tragedy with attacks on gun policy, whether calling for more or less guns, it is not the time. I find the attack on the media absurd, it is not the time. I find the need to attack mental health also bizarre. I find the claims that this is all due to the removal of God from schools ludicrous. I find the attacks on those offering prayer and sympathy for the families ludicrous. I am angered by this focus on meaningless things, instead of focusing on the families who need the worlds love and prayer, almost farcical. We as a people cannot process this kind of evil, we do not want to believe that evil exists so we search for someone or something to blame. I blame EVIL!

Having said that I am going to weigh in on the above topics. I am not open about the fact that I own a gun but I do. I also believe that there should be regulations on who can own guns, what kind of guns a citizen should be able to own and that if you own a gun and a crime is committed with it you should be held as responsible as the person who perpetrated the attack. That being said I also think every law-abiding citizen should have a gun and know how to use it. I have spent the better part of my life educating children and have had the argument with my father about teachers being armed, I have intimate knowledge of how fast a child can get into a place they should not be and can see the disastrous outcome of such a thing. But, I can also see that maybe if the principal, vice principal and other adult who had first encountered Adam had been armed this whole event could have been avoided. I have read the statistics of lower crime rates in countries where their populous is armed; you are going to think twice about attacking someone if everyone around you is armed. Having said all that I also have to say, Gun laws are for law abiding citizens, a criminal is not going to wait the mandatory waiting period or go through legal channels to get guns. Restricting the ability for law abiding citizens to protect themselves will only lead to more death.

The media. I understand the frustration with the sensationalism of tragedy, and it is true we as people fuel it, but long before social media, TV or the internet the people went in mass to see tragedy acted out on the stage. I find it ironic that during all of this I have been writing a paper about Aristotle and the dramatic tragedy genre. I admit that throughout this writing I have also been surfing for information about the shooting. I want to know what is known, I am the kind of person who the more information I can obtain, the more I think I can wrap my mind around something this awful, the more I can understand the why. It is not true but it is my way of coping. The media’s job is to keep us informed about what is happening in our world, do they go too far sometimes, Yes. Do I think interviewing young children and making them relive these horrible events is reprehensible, yes! Do I think that shooting pictures in a prayer service of the mourners is unfeeling, yes. However, I also think they serve a purpose. Oh, yes and the idea that media is to blame that the perpetrators of heinous crimes such as this are spurred on by the fame is in my mind illogical, in so many cases they kill themselves so it is not like they reap the benefits this attention.

God, Prayer and love. These atrocities have become more and more frequent over the years but the idea that the removal of prayer and God from schools being the cause is not accurate. I am nearly thirty-two, my folks are sixty three and in none of our lives has there been prayer in school. Now, we are from Washington, the least churched state in the nation, but where there have been instances of an armed person going into a school and shooting a teacher or a student there has never been a mass shooting in a Washington school. I am a Christian and wholeheartedly believe that the lack of a Godly presence in much of our world is tragic, and may be part of the cause of Evil getting a stronger grasp on our world, but I have to say that this is an argument without much weight.

While on the topic of God, I must address the absurd notion that offering prayers is doing nothing. It is only nothing if you do not believe that God has power. Even then, it shows that people care, people feel their pain and want to help some way. Arguing and bickering about what or who is to blame will not help these families heal, love and care for them may.

After all of that I again send my prayers and sympathy to a community that was rocked by this meaningless violence. To families who are missing their loved ones, to parents who mourn the loss of innocence. May God help you to heal and wrap his loving arms around you, protecting you from the uncaring, the unthinking and the hurtful things in this world.

I have always been the kind of person who likes to write down my thought, especially the ones that keep me up at night. Following the tragedy in Newton, CT I found myself writing many missives about my thought regarding the sadness of this event and what I wished could be done. I had no good way to share them so I was encouraged to start this blog. Again, I don’t consider myself a blogger so who know what will appear here and how often it will come but it’s nice to have a place to put those longer thoughts that are really meant to be shared.